Tom Daley cut out sweets and ice cream to help him win Olympic bronze

I lost a stone to make a bigger splash: Tom Daley cut out sweets and ice cream to help him win bronzeDaley led going into the final round, but was beaten into third by excellent dives from David Boudia , who won gold, and silver medallist Qiu BoThe 18-year-old looked elated as the final results were shown, jumping in the pool and hugging those around himSinger Cheryl Cole: 'Good luck @tomdaley1994 you've got this !! #teamGB'

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UPDATED:

07:32 GMT, 13 August 2012

Poised on the diving board in the tiniest of trunks, he could not have looked in better shape.

But Tom Daley nearly missed out on a medal because sweets and ice cream were making him too fat, he revealed yesterday.

The 18-year-old, who won a bronze medal in the diving on Saturday, had to go on a diet to be in with a chance at the Olympics. So he cut out his two vices, losing more than a stone.

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Achieved his dream: Bronze medallist Tom Daley of Great Britain poses with the national flag after the medal ceremony

After a shaky performance last night Daley was ecstatic to claim bronze

Jumping for joy: A relived Tom Daley jumps in front of the media cameras

Daley started his new regime after his coach, Alexei Evangulov, the director of British diving, said his Chinese competitors were ‘working three times harder’ than him and he would have to take his diet more seriously.

‘At the beginning of the year he was saying I was fat,’ Daley said after winning his medal. ‘I’ve lost seven and a half kilos (1st 3lb). I can’t wait to go and eat what I like!’

Daley, who began competing in international diving championships when he was 13, said he had started putting on weight after he stopped growing.

‘When you get to a certain age you can’t get away with eating like a growing kid,’ he said.

‘It got to the stage where I just needed to cut out the sweets, cut out the not so good stuff, and then cut down a little bit on portion size so that I got down to my fighting weight.

‘I made sure that I was eating healthy balanced meals, which I was anyway but just cutting out the snacks in between.

'I love ice cream just generally, any flavour, I used to have one every weekend, so that’s the main thing that I had to cut out.

'It’s worked out for me. I was glad I did it.’

Tom Daley put in a strong performance to win bronze in the 10m platform diving final, ultimately missing out on a gold medal by the slimmest of margins

Here we go: Tom Daley is thrown into the pool after winning his bronze medal

Well earned splash: Daley celebrates in the pool with teammates after winning a bronze medal

The roar from supporters as they screamed, clapped and cheered whenever he appeared on the platform seemed likely to raise the roof

But after returning to the athletes’ village following his victory, the first thing he did was ditch the diet. ‘I had a tub of chocolate ice cream,’ he grinned.

Hours earlier Daley leapt into the pool in delight after it was announced that he had won bronze in the individual diving.

He dedicated his medal to his father Rob, who died last May from a brain tumour, saying: ‘I really wish my dad was here to see me do that performance, because we had such a long, tough journey together.’

At a press conference yesterday, Daley added: ‘The bronze was really a gold for me after the tough 18 months I’ve had.

Tom Daley pictured with his father Rob Daley who died in May last year, said he wanted to do his proud

‘I’m over the moon that I’ve come home with a medal, it was something I’ve worked so hard for since I was a young kid.’

In his father’s last few days, Daley would hold his hand and tell him how much he wanted to do him proud at the Olympics.

But he cut short just one training session throughout his father’s long illness – on the day he passed away.

That was exactly as his father would have wanted it.

Realisation: Daley gestures to team GB after he realizes he has won a medal in the Men's 10m Platform Final diving competition

As his scores were displayed on the board they waved Union flags and chanted 'Team GB, Team GB'

Even after undergoing surgery, Daley senior cooked breakfast for his sons, drove them to their various training sessions and waved a giant Union Jack at the poolside every time Tom competed.

Following his father’s death, however, Daley came under fire from critics – including his coach – who said he was spending too much time promoting his lucrative sidelines instead of training.

In February, after a poor performance, Evangulov went public with his anger.

‘Nobody will listen to me,’ he said. ‘If Tom stopped all his media work now, I might be able to get him up to the third-best diver.

Winner: Tom Daley of Britain settled for the bronze at 556.95 after leading going into the final dive in front of a raucous home crowd

Worrying: It was a tricky start for Britain's poster boy – his first dive ended with a splash and he was scored a 75.60.

Tom Daley and coach Andy Banks complain to an official regarding a re-dive after flash photography from spectators interfered with his dive

'I don’t mind what he does if he gets the medal. He can become a rock star.’

While Daley’s success this weekend will help to silence his critics, it seems unlikely to stop his ambitions outside diving.

There are already rumours that he has signed a deal with an independent production firm to launch his TV career.

‘Going into TV presenting is actually what I want to do when I finish diving or maybe alongside diving,’ he said yesterday. ‘But I don’t know what’s going on to be honest.

‘I haven’t had any meetings with my management people since the Games so I don’t know what they’ve got planned for me but I’d be excited to try something like that in the time that I’ve got off.’

And, of course, there’s Rio. ‘An Olympic gold medal is the next thing I want to achieve,’ he said.

Support: David Beckham was also in the audience and could be seen high-fiving eldest child Brooklyn as Daley stormed to the top of the leaderboard after his fourth dive. His two other sons, Romeo and Cruz were also with him

Before the event Daley revealed that David Beckham had text him words of advice

‘Peak age for a diver is 22 to 24 so for me Rio 2016 is going to be a peak Olympics.

‘I’ve already been doing the dives I do now for two years.

'Going into Rio I’ll have been doing them six years and the next Olympics I’ll have been doing them ten years.

‘If I could get a gold medal in Rio then that would round off my collection.’

But for now, he said, it’s back to normal.

‘I’ve got my Spanish A-level results on Thursday and then I’m back to school in September, so it’s kind of just back to reality really.’

The already hyped pressure on Daley, one of the poster boys for the London Olympics, reached new levels in the past week after he finished fourth in the platform synchro alongside Pete Waterfield

'I knew going into the last round that if I was on par with the others then they were going to overtake me because of the degree of difficulty that I had going into the last round,' said Tom Daley